AMIDST soulful Buddhist chants, a little bit of John Lennon also wafted through the muggy morning air in September. As we stepped into Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Prison, (S-21) – dictator Pol Pot’s secret prison – a young, scruffy Cambodian busker seated by the entrance crooned a gut-wrenching version of The Beatle’s ‘Give Peace a Chance.’

Nothing prepared me for what was to follow. This school building (Tuol Svay Pray High School) had five wings and a large grassy compound. But, as we made our way from one wing to another, the horror unfolded. Thousands of black and white photographs of Cambodians stared back at us; prisoner beds lay as silent spectators. Prisoners were tortured here, interrogated and often, executed. Of the countless detainees, only seven survived. The gallows, graves (belonging to those who lost their lives here), and the claustrophobia-inducing sections within the barbed wire wings made even the strongest among us, get jelly-kneed.